Withered Away
by GhostPikachu
Summary: It seems like ages since the serial bomber case and the incident in the elevator at Tokyo Tower. It had been the day that Takagi learned that Edogawa Conan was something much, much more than he'd realized. Back then, Conan had made him a promise: "I'll tell you...in the afterlife." But now it's been a year since the death of Edogawa Conan. And yet he's still here.
1. Dreaming Limbo

Takagi opens his eyes, a feeling of unease weighing down on his chest. He feels like he's supposed to remember something important—even more so than the day he has ahead of him.

Today is the one-year anniversary of Edogawa Conan's death.

Takagi tries to push the thought out of his mind as he pulls back the covers and instinctively walks over the window to take a look at the outside world before he plunges in. The ground is littered with yellow, glimmering with a hint of morning frost. The ginkgo tree outside the building has shed its leaves during the night. For some reason, that puts Takagi on edge, even though it's hardly unexpected given the time of year.

Quickly making himself presentable, Takagi heads out the door an hour early. He has to stop by the florist's shop to pick up a bouquet for the visitation today—the (rather good-sized) portion of the homicide division who had known Conan are all going to gather at the cemetery before work. Everyone wants to do what they can for their little mascot, even after he's long gone. Yet Takagi finds himself in a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. He had liked Conan very much, and he always misses his presence while he's out handling cases, but the cemetery holds the key to a puzzle that can never be solved now.

It seems like it's been decades since the serial bomber case, like it's a distant memory becoming grainy and faded around the edges. And yet, it's only been a year and a half. But even so, Takagi could never forget his short time in the elevator at Tokyo Tower with Conan. Everything is still vivid in his mind as if he had filmed it all and stored it there: the sweat running down his back as the bomb sat directly above his head, the instructions to disarm it coming mechanically out of his mouth, the distinct outline of Conan with his legs dangling into the elevator, a calculating expression splayed across his features. And most of all, their little exchange that had shaken Takagi to his core.

_"Who are you?" Takagi asks, his chest tight as the puzzle pieces seem like they're finally going to click into place. The moment doesn't last, only scattering them hopelessly far away from each other. Takagi can tell from the complete lack of uncertainty as Conan had disarmed the bomb up above. His instructions had fallen on deaf ears because Conan is already an expert. Not that it matters; they need that clue and it's going to cost them their lives. The blood rushes to Takagi's ears, his eyes locked on someone that he doesn't know._

_ A bitter chuckle escapes the boy's lips. "I'll tell you," he says in a low tone, his teeth almost sharp. The light hits his glasses and highlights all the harsh angles of his face. "In the afterlife."_

Takagi doesn't know who Edogawa Conan was. Maybe no one had. And no one ever would—his murderer had made sure of that.

Yes, it's been a year and a half since Takagi started digging. The more he saw, the more questions he'd had. Every single thing about Conan was a façade. His acting left much room for improvement, and a long hard look at his documents had revealed signs of forgery. There's still no fingerprint on record despite the sheer number of cases he'd been involved in. Even Conan's death certificate seems off. It seems like it's been hastily thrown together, and it makes Takagi wonder if it's like that because someone wanted to get it on record before anyone else could scrutinize Conan's documents too closely.

Evidently, Conan had been involved in something bad. His death left a bad taste in Takagi's mouth, not just because it was a tragedy, but because the case closed unnaturally fast. The certificate reads "cause of death unknown" and that's all. It strikes him as awfully convenient considering that Conan had had close ties with the police, and he'd been young and in good health.

_It couldn't have all been coincidence, _Takagi thinks for the thousandth time as he starts his car. The elite higher-ups shut down every single investigation related to Conan with hardly an explanation? They'd done a damn good job too, managing to sweep the ridiculous number of red flags under the rug. It's bizarre in all the wrong ways, and it makes Takagi feel like a spider is crawling up his spine when he thinks about it too much.

Edogawa Conan is dead under mysterious circumstances.

The Mouris have been missing ever since.

Haibara Ai has been missing ever since.

Agasa Hiroshi suddenly dies of heart failure.

Hattori Heiji moves to Canada without warning to study.

And Takagi can't do a thing about it.

He arrives at the cemetery right on time, bouquet in hand in his only black suit. Half the homicide department stands in front of row 16, plot 6: Conan's permanent residence. Gray clouds hover overhead, almost foreboding in the somber atmosphere. It's completely silent as Shiratori stands in front after everyone arrives and gives a speech. Takagi can hardly listen to it, a wordy thing about innocence lost and celebrating the life that he had lived. No, Shiratori doesn't understand. The life that Edogawa Conan had lived was no life at all.

Instead, Takagi's eyes drift to Conan's grave as he tunes Shiratori out. It's the same as it always is, of course, standing cold in the ground, the engraving still too fresh to be worn:

Edogawa Conan

Dearly Beloved

1990-1997

Somehow, the epitaph doesn't really do it for Takagi. It seems so impersonal, something put there just for the sake of something being there. But, Takagi supposes, how could anyone possibly sum up the enigma called Conan in enough words for a gravestone? The odd overly-childish behavior, the subtle pushes in the right direction of a crucial clue, the look in his eyes when he thought no one was watching…

Soon enough, the speech is over and a line forms so that everyone can have a moment of silence with Conan. By the time it's Takagi's turn, the space is already completely covered in flowers of all different kinds and colors, but he gently sets down the red snapdragons anyway. It's not much, but it's something.

Takagi is suddenly rooted to the spot as the temperature drops and raises the hair on the back of his neck. He's hit head on with the unmistakable feeling of a pair of watchful eyes on his back. It seems to dull the world, turning it into a white noise grayscale mass of fuzzy outlines frozen in time. The eyes leave as quickly as they came, and with a jolt the grass is green again and he's come back to reality.

His brain feels like static.

Afterwards, Takagi can't find it in him to go to work. His head is pounding and the chill of the cemetery still hasn't left his bones when he pulls into the parking of the modest apartment building and trudges inside. Before he knows it, it's evolved into a full-on migraine, and he retreats to his bed to try to sleep it off.

He drifts off, and when he's aware again it's pitch black with only a small splash of color that rapidly gets closer. Or maybe he's the one who's moving; he can't tell. Either way, he finds himself standing before a hefty pile of bouquets, a gust of wind from nowhere carrying some petals away with it into the hollow vacuum. Out of the corner of his eye, Takagi sees something move.

"Red snapdragons?" two voices in unison say, one high-pitched and clear and the other deeper. He knows those voices, but from where is escaping him. Takagi blinks and Edogawa Conan is suddenly standing facing away from him in the middle of the pile, slightly transparent. He's dangling Takagi's bouquet in his left hand, and a leaf falls into the pile.

Normally, Takagi thinks, he'd be freaking out right about now. But for some reason, it seems in the moment just like any other conversation, and not like he's talking to someone who's been dead for a year. He furrows his brow—he can play along. "You don't like them?"

Conan turns around, his expression blank but his eyes sharp, almost glowing with a reflective sheen like a cat's. The irises aren't blue anymore, but a muted gray. "Playing dumb doesn't suit you, Officer Takagi. What must you think of me?"

"It's the truth, isn't it?" Takagi retaliates.

Snapdragons: a symbol of dishonesty.

A hollow laugh echoes through the abyss. "Observant as always." Letting the bouquet slip from his hand and scatter beneath his feet, Conan casts a glance over his shoulder with worry in his face. "I've been trying to reach you. I made a promise to you."

"I haven't forgotten," Takagi replies simply.

The pale lips turn upwards just a fraction. "Of course not. I would have expected nothing less. You're a real detective, after all." He drops the shadow of a smile as the faint sound of crows reaches Takagi's ears. "I can't stay long."

The sound quickly becomes louder and louder until it becomes deafening, accompanied by the flutter of wings and the distinct clang of a bullet shell falling on concrete. Takagi moves to take a step back, but finds himself paralyzed. His gaze falls on Conan, who's collapsed and is breathing heavily on his knees among the petals as they turn brown and disintegrate into dust.

"They took everything," Conan whispers shakily, his voice still somehow clear amongst the noise. Reddish tears stain his cheeks as he looks away. A drop falls to the ground and turns the blackness all at once into a deep blood red. "Everything."

It's so loud now that Takagi can barely hear himself think. He's suddenly released from his temporary paralysis, and he crumples to the ground with his hands pressed tight against his ears. He distantly feels a cold presence drag itself towards him, and he then hears a ragged whisper in his ear: "Tropical Land is the first note of the funeral march. You'll find your answers there."

When Takagi looks up, Conan's gone and all that remains is a single red and white pill pressed into his palm. A black mass of crows dives for him, a stark contrast against the red nothingness, eyes wide with deranged hunger as they swoop down to surround him. The cawing seems to become laughter, shrill in his ears. He can distantly hear a scream, the two voices together once again. They scream, and they scream, and they scream, the sound more terrible the longer they wail.

Takagi's eyes fly open.

This time, he remembers.

* * *

**Hope you enjoyed! This was supposed to be a more traditional Takagi elevator fic, but it got a little out of hand.**

**THERE IS ONE MORE CHAPTER AFTER THIS ONE!**


	2. Truthfully Death

The clouds are already different hues of pink and orange by the time Takagi has calmed down enough to go back to sleep, so he sighs heavily and heads to the kitchen for a morning coffee. Steam rises above the little white mug, but when he takes a sip, it's ice cold. Takagi's thoughts wander back to Conan, and his blood runs as cold as the coffee. Conan had loved iced coffee; he would always beg Ran-san for the stuff when they were wrapping up a case. Once or twice, Takagi had even seen an officer slip it to him when she wasn't looking.

He doesn't have time to go further down memory lane because in the blink of an eye, someone is there. Takagi dare not ponder who, but his detective instincts are screaming it at him as he numbly pours the coffee down the sink. He can feel the eyes boring into his back asking difficult questions and demanding attention, but he whips around to be met with an empty room. Except that it doesn't feel empty—if Takagi turned around right now, he might accidentally make breakfast for two.

_It's nothing, _Takagi tries to tell himself. Maybe his coffee maker is broken. Maybe he's too tired to think straight. But it certainly can't be what his gut is trying to tell him. Anything but that. It's impossible. Utterly ridiculous. He's a detective, for God's sake, not a paranormal investigator.

Still, as Takagi stands in front of the door with his hand on the knob, something stops him. He's not even sure he can explain why, but he can't seem to open it and leave for some minutes, grappling with the little whisper in his mind that convinces him of what his instincts already know. Takagi doesn't want to face it, but there is an undeniable fact that sits like a weight in his chest—Edogawa Conan is not quite gone. Somehow, through some miracle or nightmare, or both, he's come back. And Takagi intends to find out why.

Swearing under his breath, Takagi kicks his shoes off and heads back into the kitchen, grabbing the corded phone from its perch off the wall. He hurriedly explains that his migraine hasn't gone away and that he can't come into work today. It's a sort of half-truth, anyways. His head still feels a bit like pins and needles, buzzing with poorly repressed anxiety over the Edogawa Conan affair. He hangs up with a _click, _getting out a tall glass and more coffee grounds. Silently, he makes an iced coffee and sets it down in front of an empty chair at his kitchen table. He rests his palms on the table for a minute.

"A peace offering," he says simply. The absurdity of talking to a seemingly empty room does not escape him, but he can't find it in him to care. He really, really doesn't like whatever had happened a year ago—a gory domino effect that left behind nothing more than a footnote when it should have been the front page. Takagi gets the feeling that it's going to fall on his shoulders to fix it. After all, he's the only one who could never quite give up on the case after it was closed, the only one who took the time to squint. With that thought, he shrugs on his coat and hesitates just a little bit in front of the door.

This time, nothing stops him, and he steps out into the dreary morning. Rain pounds against his windshield as he drives (admittedly faster than he should) towards Tropical Land, the silhouette of the Ferris wheel stark against the gray blanket draped over the sky. The brightly colored lights seem to dull in the dripping haze, unable to quite pierce it. As Takagi draws nearer, the advertisements on the road become more numerous, all plastered with huge, fake smiles that seem to ooze poison from the lips and whisper empty promises of escapism among the cotton candy and cheap teddy bears. It makes Takagi feel a little sick to the stomach, but he drives on.

When he finally arrives, almost nobody is there, of course—it's a weekday morning and pouring to boot. The few people he passes seem in a hurry to get home and come back another day, which is fine by Takagi. It just means that he doesn't have to worry about being disturbed.

Though Takagi has to admit, he had no idea what he's supposed to do now. He's not sure what he was expecting—some sort of sign or vision or something to tell where to go, he supposes—but he had no such luck. The lack of direction leaves Takagi to wander around aimlessly in the rain for half an hour. It gives him too much time to turn over the facts in his head for the millionth time, and it makes him wonder: what kind of answers is he going to find? There's some part of him buried deep in his bones that isn't sure he wants to know. Conan's case is its own Pandora's box; if Takagi were to open it, what demons might rush at him with their blood-soaked fingers already wrapped around his throat?

When it comes down to it, Takagi has to admit to himself that he doesn't want the same thing to happen to him.

By now, the rain has completely soaked through his coat and pants, and Takagi feels a bit like a drowned rat as he presses on through the now soggy fairgrounds and the mud begins to seep into his shoes. He probably should have brought an umbrella. All he can hear is the sound of rain hitting the pavement around him, and he moves forward almost mechanically, a lone figure among the deserted rides.

As he passes the Mystery Coaster, his ears stop working, the rain fading away to be replaced with the cawing of the crows. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, but puts one foot in front of the other. He knows that he must be getting close to where Conan wants him. Everything in him screams at him to turn back, go back home and crawl in bed and wake up tomorrow to a world where none of this ever happened. Conan swoops in on a crime scene, _again, _much to the chagrin of everyone involved with that irritating overly-childish tone of voice. In that world, Takagi would watch Conan and slowly try to fit the puzzle together like he always does, the pieces always just out of reach.

Except that a year has come and gone, and with it it's taken Conan, and nothing can ever change that.

So, Takagi grits his teeth and continues, getting closer to the pieces than he had ever imagined. Perhaps getting closer than he had ever wanted.

A flicker of movement in his peripheral vision catches his eye, and he looks over to see the shadow of a little boy standing in the middle of the paved pathway. The shadow lifts his hand and points behind him towards a gap between two maintenance buildings before running around the corner and out of sight. Takagi doesn't have to be a detective to know what that means.

He practically sprints after Conan, skidding to a halt in front of an unassuming space made up of nothing but overgrown grass and some forgotten pieces of trash. The shadow is gone, but Conan's not; the chill Takagi feels now is more than just the rain and wind. It extends deep into his heart, into his very soul even. It's the chill of death.

"Here I am," Takagi shouts over the crows. "Show me the answers."

Without warning, the crows grow louder and Takagi is too nauseous to stand. He distantly feels himself fall over and get a mouthful of mud. He barely has time even register what's happening before he falls unconscious.

When he opens his eyes, it's silent and the pain is gone, replaced with a feeling of dread as he stares once again into the overwhelming display of absolutely nothing. The darkness is total, a velvety black that takes and takes and never lets go. No sun in the universe could have pierced the inky veil. It's all this that makes Takagi tremble, but more than anything? This darkness is familiar. But how could it not be? It seems saturated with Conan's presence.

"You came," comes Conan's voice from behind him. Takagi jumps and whips around to see the shadow standing there, almost blending in with the surrounding darkness. But when he blinks, Conan looks just the same as the night before.

"Of course I did," says Takagi. "I'd suspected something was off about you for months. You're awfully intelligent for a kid your age, but what that means is when you speak, I'll listen. It's probably important."

Conan nods. "If I had to be stuck with someone that day at Tokyo Tower…I'm glad it was you. But I digress; you came for answers." His gray irises rise to meet Takagi's blue ones, and Takagi has to suppress a shudder at the unnatural glow. "I have a better connection to you here; it's why I asked you to come. This, Officer Takagi, is where I died." An odd half-grimace half-smirk decorates his face for a second. "According to me, at any rate."

Takagi furrows his eyebrows. "Here? But your body was found in a sewer tunnel." He supposes it's possible that Conan had been killed here and then moved somewhere else, but there had been no signs of such a thing. And he's completely sure of that; that crime scene was not one that Takagi can easily forget. He can imagine it all vividly even now: the pool of blood around the tiny, broken form, the nightmarish red splatters on the wall, and the bullet shell lodged in the wall where Conan's head must have been. Everything had been as messy as if the crime had taken place right there.

"While it is true that I was killed in a sewer tunnel, that was just a…'formality,' if you will. If you ask anyone else, I died at gunpoint in 1997. But if you ask me, I would tell you that I died in '96. Let me ask you something, Officer Takagi: who do you think Edogawa Conan was? What kind of monster do you imagine was crawling underneath his skin after the elevator?"

Takagi's head spins with more questions than ever, but he opens his mouth and replies in a manner that seems eerily calm even to his own ears. "Monster?" Conan tilts his head expectantly. "No, but imagine watching yourself from my perspective—here I am, some police dog stuck in a hopeless situation, and then there's _you. _You, the spider spinning webs in the shadows until your target is too ensnared to get out. You, the brain with nothing at your disposal but the world at your fingertips. You, the eye of the storm. Sometimes, I was curious about you, and other times, I could hardly stand to look at you because I couldn't even imagine what you could be capable of. You're no monster, but there came a point where I wondered if you were even human."

"I often wondered the same thing. I watched people die in the crossfire of my mission to take down my killers, and it always shook me, but never broke me." Inhaling deeply, Conan shoves his hands into his pockets. The unspoken question does not escape Takagi's keen senses: _But I wonder if maybe it should have?_

"Why are you here?" asks Takagi abruptly, eager not to go down that rabbit hole. "Why come back now, after a year? It's too late now, Conan-kun. Your case was closed as fast as the higher-ups could manage, and everyone you knew has disappeared in one way or another. Maybe I could have done something back then. Kept the case open longer, presented some kind of evidence of your killer's identity, something like that. But it's all over and done with now."

Conan's head snaps upwards, his irises seem to swirl with a storm and darken. "You think I asked for this? You think I want to come back and see the trail of death I've left behind me? Be stuck always watching and unable to lift a finger to do anything? I don't know why I'm here, but I would sure like not to be. Maybe then, I could have died with a little scrap of hope that they would leave everyone alone." He sighs and rubs his temples, lowering his voice back to normal volume. "If I'm here for a reason, I don't know what it is and I sure as hell don't care. All that matters to me is that it's an opportunity to pass on what I knew. And you're the only one I can trust."

"Tell me what happened," Takagi urges as he gingerly takes a step towards Conan. "Fulfill your promise. Who are you, really?"

Conan looks away. "I'm sorry about this," he starts slowly, guiltily, "but in order for you to understand, to _really_ understand, I have to show you. I only hope you won't think too ill of me."

Takagi opens his mouth to respond, but doesn't have the chance to before the world starts turning all around him, a mish-mash of colors and people and buildings and voices that makes his eyes sore and makes him feel like that migraine is resurfacing. He squeezes his eyes shut in response, only daring to open them when the unbearable tangle of voices becomes a steady murmur all around him. He's standing in the middle of a crowd of people leaving Tropical Land, not even a hint of a raincloud in sight. He catches sight of some scattered police officers, and looks back at the brightly lit Mystery Coaster, which has come to a halt.

"Are you okay?" asks a very familiar feminine voice, and Takagi jerks his head to side to be met face-to-face with Ran-san. She looks a little younger than he remembers her, like all of her worries have been lifted from her shoulders.

"I'm uh…fine," Takagi hesitates, his eyes darting all over the place. His eyes nearly bulge out of his head when he notices what looks very much like himself talking to Inspector Megure. The Mystery Coaster…this isn't related to the homicide on the rollercoaster two years ago, is it?

He freezes as he spots a man in all black hurry around the same corner on the path that Takagi had just taken. He feels like two people at once, still Takagi Wataru but not; his brain splits between two commands at the same time, and he has the impression that he's only watching a movie. The feeling is too alien.

"Go home without me, Ran." The words tumble out of his mouth without his permission. "I'll catch up with you later!" He waves with a cheery smile that drops the instant he's turned away from her.

He starts running towards the corner, and Takagi catches a glimpse of someone that he used to know in the window of a shop as he runs after the man in black. At first, Takagi thinks that he must be mistaken, but he's certainly seen enough of his face in the papers or on a case to know exactly who he's looking at: Kudo Shinichi.

Immediately, the gears start turning.

His own mind seems to be suppressed, and it's dragged underneath the surface. Takagi has trouble remembering who he is, his mind crowded with the past and the future melted together. His heart races as he instinctively lightens his step and peeks around the wall to witness an illegal transaction. Some feeling of triumph wells up in Shinichi's chest. And why not? After all, these criminals have barely started and have already been caught by The Heisei Holmes—

His thoughts are cut off with a splitting pain in his head, knocking him to the ground with an explosion of stars in his vision. Blood trickles down his forehead, and a grunt escapes his lips as a drop splashes onto the grass. The triumph is instantly shattered and replaced with panic, a blind panic that shuts him down and screams at him to get up, move, do _something. _He can't make his limbs move. All he can do is lay there and die. They're going to kill him, aren't they? He can't die. He's only sixteen, he has a whole future ahead of him, he doesn't want to die.

"Damn kid," a second figure with long silver hair mutters. A metal pipe drops onto the ground next to Shinichi's head. "How'd you not notice him?"

"Sorry."

"We're going to have the cops on our backs in a second over this." The long-haired man produces a sleek black briefcase. "Lucky for you, I have a solution. This is as good an opportunity as any to give this poison a test run. It's supposed to be untraceable."

The briefcase is opened and the man removes the red and white pill, his partner handing him a water bottle. He crouches down and grabs Shinichi's bangs to raise his head, sliding the pill inside his mouth and forcing it down with the water.

Shinichi—no, not Shinichi, his name is _Takagi_—lets out a barely audible whimper as the pair in black walks away, not even sparing a glance as they disappear from his line of sight. His breathing accelerates, and stops as his heart starts to burn. Every heartbeat is agony, and he feels like is chest is being torn apart. His muscles spasm violently all at once as he curls up in a ball. His bones feel like they're shifting, breaking, melting and molding themselves into something else entirely. He distantly hears a savage scream, and wonders if it's not his own.

"Hey, wake up, kid." A light is shined directly in his face, and Takagi groggily opens his eyes to be met with a small herd of concerned police officers. There are no more colored lights.

"What is a child even doing passed out here?" someone in the back queries.

Takagi really doesn't need more than that, but he slowly looks down at himself anyway. He's swamped in ridiculously big clothes, and something catches in his throat as he stares at the expectant officer.

The officer's eyes suddenly become gray and everything around him becomes a blurry smear, like the world has been put on pause. The soft sound of footsteps crunching on dry grass approaches, and Takagi sees the red before he sees Conan. Sprung up all around his feet are red snapdragons, which rapidly expand outwards and engulf the space, drown Takagi in a sea of dewy crimson.

"You're Kudo Shinichi," Takagi breathes. His mind is a tornado, violently whipping around and around a thousand words exchanged, all the little hints that now made sense. He can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like. For him, this is just a nightmare, but for Conan? For Kudo? This had been the end of the world for him. He had been forced to live every day like that with no solution in sight.

"I was." Conan glances down at his hands, much too small for him. "But Kudo Shinichi ceased to be that day at Tropical Land. We never managed to make an antidote. We tried. We really tried." He breaks off and collects himself. "This is an entire underground criminal syndicate with eyes and ears everywhere. And that makes this sort of secret is hard to keep, Officer Takagi. You're bound to make mistakes, and when you do it around the wrong witnesses…"

Conan doesn't have to finish that sentence.

"And so that was the end of Edogawa Conan," Takagi says softly. It's hard to wrap his mind around, that someone who burned so bright could be snuffed out in an instant just like that. No justice, no clues, no nothing; only a swift bullet and that was that.

"And thus, I have a very important question for you." Conan sits down in front of Takagi, sinking a little bit into the petals. "Can I count on you?"

Takagi's mouth goes dry. "Count on me for what?"

"You saw what happened to me. To everyone around me. Can I trust you to finish what I started?" He leans forward and rests his chin on the back of his clasped hands.

It's a tall order, and certainly more than Takagi can handle. These people are cunning and ruthless—how could he, some random homicide detective, even begin to undertake something like that? He only has state resources (no doubt tainted given the sheer effort everyone had gone through to shut Conan's case), and he's no genius. He's extremely ill-equipped for such a task, and it's largely a bad idea in all respects.

But.

How many victims has this organization taken? How many lives ruined?

Kudo Shinichi had been such a promising young detective, his future completely destroyed by these people. What could Ran-san have become? Everyone else connected to this monstrosity?

And did Takagi not swear an oath to protect innocent people at his police academy graduation ceremony?

Takagi slowly nods, hardly able to breathe under the weight of what he's about to do. "How could I refuse?"

Conan closes his eyes and smiles, like he's letting a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "Thank you, Officer Takagi. Thank you…I know it's more than you want to handle, but I can see the desire for justice in you. It's too late to anything for me, this is true—but they're still out there hurting other people. Succeed where I failed. _Protect them._" Solemnly, Conan bows his head.

Takagi opens his mouth, but doesn't have a chance to respond before he feels wet grass underneath him. As he slowly cracks his eyes open, sunlight shines directly into them, making him shut them again and roll over on the soggy earth. The rain has stopped and the sky is mostly clear. He picks himself up off the ground and makes a half-hearted attempt to get some of the grime off his clothes, quickly giving up on that.

He leans against the wall of the maintenance building for support as a flood of memories breaks the dam of his mind and rushes in to mingle with his own. Heart aching, he clenches his jaw like he's bracing himself for impact. They're not just memories, Takagi soon realizes; Kudo is giving him _information. _Everything he'd learned about this organization, all his experiences, everything is now his.

"Thank you, Kudo-kun," whispers Takagi.

The chill doesn't leave him, but he almost doesn't mind. Kudo's presence doesn't seem so foreboding anymore. Even in death, Takagi supposes, Kudo is Kudo. When he can find it in him to face the day, he brushes his sopping wet bangs out of his eyes and steps into the sunlight, one eye on the approaching rain clouds.

This isn't over, but he'll be damned if he won't see it through.

* * *

**Sorry this took like five million years but it's done! Hope you liked it! :)**


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